Jar's belief statement- Part 2

It was a parable about God. All the possibilities you note are impossible even to imagine in the context of Christian teaching about God, even the most liberal Christian teaching. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A young person in that Christian school context where the religion is what is always being discussed, would know that it was a parable about the nature of God and salvation. The only apparently moral answer one could possibly arrive at the way the story is set up, again in that educational context, is that the "warlord" should have saved everybody. It is the liberal Christian conclusion and the story leads straight to it, and it seems to me that no other possibility would have occurred to anyone in that setting. I don't see how any of your suggestions would have occurred to any of them. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The problem with the story is that there is no way to arrive at any conclusion other than that the God of Biblical Christianity is evil or false -- He should have done something else than the Bible says He does. Election is obviously evil according to the parable, for instance. To be righteous, the "warlord" must not choose some over others.It is set up so that you cannot morally come out on the side of this warlord. He is evil no matter how you look at it. All the options you suggested rest on the same conclusion. So even if one allows that one might think of making war on the warlord or going over to some other warlord, or whatever the other options were, these are all NEGATIVE options, because the implication of the story is that this warlord, who is standing in for the God of Christianity, is wrong in his actions and must be resisted or rejected.There is no conclusion to the story that exonerates him. Typical liberal Christian or even atheist reasoning.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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If you agree, then we're fine. There is no other conclusion to the story anyone could arrive at than that the Biblical God is evil or false. In fact it's a perfect case of a fallacy, but I'm not sure what the fallacy is. Poisoning the well perhaps. From that story, which casts him as an evil warlord, nobody can seriously consider the claims of the Biblical God -- and that's why your teacher told it. There was no real thinking involved, no real questions, only an inexorable conclusion. The only REAL question would have been to question the fairness of the story itself.

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a portrayal of the warlord as selfless and merciful in what you wrote, let alone see it as a real option if it were in your post. And even if it were, I can't see a kid, a teenager I guess, choosing this option. Remember how it is worded, the people were "near starving," and the warlord COULD have fed them all. The kid's conclusion is that he should have fed them all, "not just those that believed in him." What other conclusion can one come to really? This is a completely false view of the God I believe in. Refusing to believe in God is not in any way choosing starvation or suffering of any kind in this life. Obviously it is easy to refuse God because life is just fine without him according to most. There is absolutely no pressure to believe in God. The warning of eternal punishment is easily rejected because it is not felt, there is no felt starvation, there is no pressure. So the story is making a false equivalence between the cases. It is false in every way. The appeal of salvation is a loving God who died for us, not a warlord who demands submission or else. The warning of punishment is not the gospel, it's part of the picture of why salvation is needed. But the God one goes to is a God of love, not of petty deals, despite the determination of so many, as in this story, to make him into that.Here's how you put the "positive" option in Message 1: But the question was "What do you think of the warlord?" People may make all kinds of compromises to save themselves from starvation, but does anybody approve of a warlord who could easily feed them all refusing unless they meet his demands? Martyrs are honored because they chose death, starvation in this case, rather than give into an EVIL tyrant. The warlord in this story ends up evil no matter how you cut it.Again, this is a completely false representation of the Biblical God, who is described in the Bible as merciful to all, as taking care of all ("Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, sending rain upon the just and the unjust"). Nobody starves because they don't choose to follow the true God. The story gives false options, portraying God as the tyrant so many here describe him to be.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I would guess because you were just a kid looking to your superiors for guidance, and you were in a liberal Christian context which didn't support the Biblical picture of God anyway. Because it misrepresents the God of Christianity as evil. Because there is only one right conclusion from the story as written: the warlord is evil. See my answer to Jaderis, Message 26 above.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, it is saying God would not act like the warlord, but it is clear that the warlord represents the Biblical God. This is how jar arrives at his nonbiblical view of God. He is led by the misrepresentation of the Biblical God in the story to choose against this evil unfair Biblical God, and choose instead a God that suits his own feelings better, which is what liberal "Christianity" does. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That is true, but the story is OBVIOUSLY saying the Bible portrays him as such. It's OBVIOUSLY a parody of the Biblical God, Paul, of the doctrine of election. Are you denying that?Yes, you can pick and choose what you like from the Bible, and patch together some idea of God that pleases you, while rejecting what you don't like, just as the story leads one to do. By doing this you end up with a human-defined idea of "mercy" and a "merciful God" that feels good, instead of the full picture of the God of mercy that the Bible teaches, that includes election and judgment and all the things human nature so dislikes.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Jar can believe what he wants and so can you. What we are discussing is this story, which gives a highly negative view of the Biblical Christian God and forces anyone not willing to question the story itself to the view of God that jar has had ever since.

None of those specifics matters. The only point here is that there is no option offered in the story but that one, the picture of God as this petty unmerciful warlord. Other images of God from outside the story are not relevant to the discussion. T he story leads in one direction only, a particular ugly view of God that anyone would reject, and that fact alone disproves jar's claim that he was led to think it through.

Phat, you don't seem to be following the discussion at all. The whole point is that jar concluded that the warlord was wrong, and what I'm saying is that there is no other reasonable conclusion from it given the premises the story presents.

That is exactly correct, jar was definitely "being taught whatever it was that Joe wanted to convey to him." But in saying that you don't seem to realize that you are contradicting jar, not me. Jar thinks he learned how to think independently from that sort of teaching. I've been showing that the teaching was set up to prevent independent thinking, and lead him to only one conclusion.Actually the scripture you quote of Peter says the opposite of what you interpret it to mean. It says that we are NOT to impose our interpretations on scripture because scripture is not simply human thought, it's from God and it has a specific meaning we must understand as HE gave it, not as we interpret it. We can't help having differing interpretations of it, since we are fallible human beings, but let's not make a virtue out of it, but rather be cautious and even fearful, because this is GOD speaking, and if our interpretation is not what God meant then we're wrong. Yes anyone can believe whatever, but that isn't going to keep them from being wrong if they're wrong.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, prove it Phat. You haven't even been following the argument because it's been SHOWN that there is only one possible conclusion -- that the warlord is a bad guy.

You have to step outside the context of the story to arrive at that view. That's a different God than the one in the story. Within the story there is only one conclusion: the warlord is evil. Any OTHER idea about God is not in the story, you are importing it from elsewhere.If you need evidence that the warlord is the traditional Christian God, it's in his requiring the people to "believe in him" and in the idea of "saving" them -- which is shown in jar's saying that "he should have saved them all." Edited by Faith, : No reason given.